The Chaser Report - Going Gently | Andrew Denton

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

Andrew Denton joins the team to discuss the campaign to legalise voluntary assisted dying around Australia. His charity Go Gentle was founded in 2016, and in subsequent years most jurisdictions have introduced rules to allow VAD. Andrew talks about the intricacies of the required reform, explores different arguments and objections to euthanasia, and makes a passionate case for change. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to this afternoon's edition at the Chaser Report. In 2016, Andrew Denton was one of the founders of a charity called Go Gentle, which has been campaigning for voluntary-assisted dying laws around the country, or as they're more commonly known, euthanasia laws. He and the group have been very successful in that campaign, with changes in most jurisdictions since that time. But the current focus is New South Wales,

which has been very resistant to this in the past, and his Parliament is currently debating these laws. Of course, Andrew is a great mentor of the chasers. He brought us to television. We probably wouldn't be sitting here doing this without his involvement. Zander Charles and I sat down with Andrew to ask him about the campaign, and you'll hear that in just a moment.

Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at FIS.ca. Oh, that's always suspicious.

You know who did that to me? Andrew Bolt. I went on his show. We had a quite civilized conversation. And then, of course, he records an introduction, which completely, preemptively rebuts everything. thing I'm about to say. Brilliant.

This is Andrew Denton responding to me saying, let's do the intro later. So we're doing the intro now. We have Charles Zanda and me, Don, talking to Andrew about Go Gentle. This campaign you've been doing since 2016. You've achieved quite a bit of change. Where is voluntary assisted dying legal today?

In Australia? In Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland. If you include New Zealand in Australia, also New Zealand. I didn't, I didn't. No, you've gone so far.

I thought it was just Victoria and Queensland. No, it's, every single state in Australia, have I left one out? Is there one we can think of that wasn't in that list? We'll get to that, possibly the one that we're in right now. Oh, yeah, that might be the one, yes. It's been a complete overhaul of the laws across Australia. Pretty much. Not just me, obviously, there's been people working at this for decades.

And the fight to legalise in Victoria back in 2007, 17 was such a pitched political battle and the reason it was so pitched there'd been about 50 attempts before that to pass this law remembering that those that do back in the northern territory back in 1997 there was a law which was overturned by the commonwealth government who who use their constitutional powers and this still exists they rewrote the law so that no one in the territories the ACT or the northern territory can even debate this in their parliaments. They can't even talk about it in their parliament. Really? Because I knew they blocked it. I didn't know if they'd stifle.

No, they have no power to actually bring this before their parliaments. Wow. So 600 and almost 700,000 Australians, basically a second-class citizens on this issue. Anyway, putting that to one side. So there have been all these attempts to pass this law. What was different in 2017, very briefly, is for the first time ever a government put forward the legislation. And in a parliamentary debate, that makes a lot of difference. Anyway, the reason that was such a pitch battle is because those who oppose this, and I won't name them, but they possibly have crucifixes mostly. They knew that the minute a law was passed, it would disprove all the fearmongering and the bullshit they come up with. And that's proven to be

the case. And once one state did it, it became possible for the other states to do it. But it was a pitch battle in those states as well. Because it's always been very popular, hasn't it? Like, 90% of Australians believe that you should have the power over, you know. The numbers are kind of around 80% now, and most people support the basic proposition that somebody's dying and they're suffering. You should offer them a choice about how much they want to suffer at the end. The most popular way I hear it, I never use this myself, but I hear it all the time is, well, you wouldn't put your pets through this.

And in fact, the very first guy that was ever legally euthanized in the world was a Northern Territory and called Bob Dent. And in his last letter, as he described what his body and life had become, you know, his bones were so screwed by cancer that he couldn't even be hugged or else his ribs would crack. He actually said that, you know. If I treated my pet like this, I'll be put in jail. Yeah.

It's hard to find humour in this, isn't it, Charles? I can see the look ticking over. Yeah, that's right. No, no, because I remember back in 1997, one of the best proponents against euthanasia was a young student politician called Tony Burke. Yes. And his argument at the time to all of us, you know, budding uni students who are very woke

in our own way was that there is a sort of power imbalance that, you know, that, you know, all the statistics are that women are more likely to sort of see the financial pressures that they're disease or whatever they've got is having on everyone. To being a burden. Being a burden. So how do you argue against that? Like, what's the argument against that? Go back to 19997.

Defeat Tony Burke. No, but... I'll go back to 1997. Well, okay. First of all, I'd just say that that is just one of literally hundreds of arguments I've heard run against this. There's, as I heard a fabulous US legislator say, advising groups in Australia how to defeat this politically. She said, all you need are lots

of arguments. And when one falls over, you have another one. You don't have to persuade legislators on everything. You don't have to win their hearts and minds. You just have to persuade them not this bill. So I've heard hundreds of arguments. First of all, just on the basic question of women. So we've had two years of this law in Victoria. It's pretty much split between men and women. Why is that? Hey, guess what? Disease doesn't really discriminate. But to the question of being a burden, that's a really good question, and it's one a lot of politicians raise. There is no doubt that being a burden can be part of your suffering as you die, this sense that you're a burden, as you are no longer capable of doing all the things that you've been done independently in your

life and your children or those you love have to take it up, including, as one person I spoke to use this law, said, you know, once my family had to start wiping my ass, that was enough for me. However, the law as it exists in Australia, and as we've seen from Victoria, being a burden ain't going to get you there. You have to prove to two doctors that you're at the end stage of a pretty terrible illness and you have to go through a lot of hoops with a lot of people watching, not just two doctors. There's an awful lot of people have to look at this process. And in the end, if you're dying with this terrible disease and being a burden may be part of your

suffering, then you can make a choice about whether or not you're going to die. But, you know, if we're talking about people being pressured and if we're talking about power imbalance, one of the reasons this law and one of the key reasons this law was necessary is because there has been, and still exists in New South Wales, a real power imbalance between doctors and particularly doctors that may have a strong moral view that you would never hasten somebody's death. And between patients who may be dying, who are begging for some more pain relief or begging for it to be over and who were told by doctors so I interviewed a senior palliative care doctor here in Sydney and he said to me it's not my moral

view so if I can't deal with your pain then I'll walk with you and help you live with that pain that might be fine for him but imagine being the person in the bed it's like torture it is torture it is effectively torture the thing that changed my mind on this Andrew and I wasn't sure was seeing that it happens anyway, saying that what happens is, oh, the morphine levels get increased slowly to the point where, oh, look what happened. And it just doesn't seem a sensible thing, a sensible way to deal with this difficult situation. It's just having a de facto system where families don't get to decide, individuals don't get to decide.

It just kind of happens on the sly and there's not actually honesty about what's going on. and you don't really get to say goodbye because it just, I don't want to go into the specifics in my family, but I've certainly seen this moment where it just kind of, next day we kind of thought it would be the end and it was the end. Yeah. And not a great way to deal with it, not an honest way to deal with it.

And it's all just about being realistic about the options that are on the table at this point where death is inevitable, because it will be inevitable for us all. That's bang on, Dom. And a lot of people listen. would probably relate to what you just said. Tony Abbott, in a debate about this some years ago, arguing against it, as you might expect, he actually said, look, I'm sure we all know situations where doctors and families come to a private

arrangement, and that's just great. And I'm thinking, so what you're basically saying is that let's keep the whole thing in the dark and illegal with no checks and balances, no accountability. We actually don't know what's happening. And the people that argue against this. It worked very well for the Catholic Church that approach. The people had argued against this law, go, well, you can't have this law because it can't possibly be safe. But, hey, let's just keep it all in the shadows.

And, you know, where this first started, the Netherlands is the country that's had the longest and deepest conversation about this. Their law came about because their doctors said, we want regulation. We don't want to be doing this where people can't see it because they've been court cases, said, we want a law. And so, you know, it's always struck me as madness when legislators say this law can't be safe because what they're effectively arguing for is for a really important area of health to be left unregulated. Because there's this situation where people go online and they can contact doctors around the world and they're having makeshift euthanasious solution to them, aren't there? Yeah, I've spent time with people that have shipped in drugs from overseas

and that's a very unsure and fearful way to do it and they know what they've got is illegal. In the first podcast series I made called Better Off Dead, you can actually hear a recording of this extraordinary woman, former Telstra and New South Wales businesswoman of the year called Liz Lenoble, and she got these drugs from overseas the second time she got them because the first time they never showed up. And it's her talking to her brother and trying to work out

how to do this in a way that won't incriminate the family because these drugs are illegal. And you hear this incredible burst of emotion where her brother is quite confronted. And she says to him, why are you laughing? And he says, I'm not laughing. He was kind of a nervous laughter. And she said, well, I'm just trying to fucking get my thoughts together here. And she starts crying and there's this incredible anger because here's this woman, she's got this really rare cancer.

It was horrible. She'd been through, she gave this amazing description of what it's like to be given so much pain relief. You can't explain to the doctors the pain relief isn't working. She's been through all of this. And here she was with this illegal substance, terrified to take it, terrified not to take it. It was just, it's an awful position to be in,

which is, again, another reason why you have a law so people have a legal avenue. Well, it's regulating thought already happens, isn't it? It reminds me of, I mean, debates such as abortion where it is inevitable, it's just do you have rules to make it as safe as possible or do you not? And rules that protect both the people who are in that situation and their families and the doctors. You know, I interviewed the former Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions Judge Justice Caldry who had sat on a court case of a man called Alan Maxwell whose wife was terminally ill and at her request he suffocated her. to death in their caravan. And it was this heartbreaking testimony where he said all she, all she, all I wanted to do

after I ended her life was cuddle her. Anyway, because it was a crime, it's obviously a crime to kill somebody. He came before Justice Caldry and Justice Caldry had to record a conviction because it's a crime, but he gave him no custodial sentence. And these are called quote-unquote mercy killings. And again, it's another example of how our law does. doesn't work. The law recognizes that there are certain extreme circumstances where this is an act of deep compassion from somebody that had no legal option. So as it stands at the moment,

if you're in New South Wales, a state without euthanasia, can you cross the border into Queensland or Victoria? No, no. All these states have residential requirements. And to guard against what was called in Victoria, suicide tourism. Because, of course, people just want to travel into state when their terminallyle and find doctors. Time for a road trip. Yeah, so no better time. So no, you can't. And so people in New South Wales, it's a very problematic situation. Every other state in Australia now, the citizens of every other state in Australia have end-of-life choices which are denied to people in New South Wales. And so what's going on in Parliament at the moment? There's a bill. There's a bill. It's an independent members bill, which was co-sponsored by 28 other MPs.

which I believe is a record in the history of Australian politics. But it's not supported by the Premier or the leader of the opposition, which means that there's an awful lot you can do I've discovered over the last six years in terms of parliamentary process to make it difficult for a bill to be properly debated, to be given time to be debated. So it means that a debate is happening. It started last week, but it's happening in bits and pieces, which is not the ideal way to deal with an issue that's as contentious as this.

And those that oppose it, the numbers will probably pass the lower house. It's very tight in the upper house. But if they think that they don't have the numbers, they've only got one weapon, which is delay. Do anything to delay. Put it off to a committee. Do something. Just anything to make sure it never becomes a law. And that's what they'll try and do.

What's your view on the best way to make these kinds of laws legitimate? Because there's a few options. I mean, the government can just make law. You can have conscience votes that's happened in the past. but then you get the situation where someone who has a particular religious belief will go with that rather than asking their constituents, for instance. Or should it be looking at public opinion and saying, I know that the postal survey was a messy and difficult thing,

but it did reflect the reality, which is the vast majority of Australians wanted same-sex marriage. And that gave an enormous legitimacy that nobody could question. What do you think is the best way for governments to reflect the will of the people in these areas? I don't have a problem with a conscience vote. I think it's reasonable. I don't necessarily subscribe to the view, although many do, that simply because 80% of your electorate wants something, you as the elected representative must vote that way.

However, I do subscribe to the view that if 80% of your electorate wants something, then you should damn or do your research to find out why, and you should absolutely make your decision based on good evidence, not based on your personal view of the world. I think that is an abrogation of duty. So I think the conscience vote is all right. It would have been great if there'd been a national referendum on this issue because we all know what it would have been, an overwhelming support. You know, the support for assisted dying is far in excess of any of the polling

that was ever for same-sex marriage. Because guess what, we're all going to die. But that didn't happen. So I think the way it's happening is probably the best way it can happen. You know, in Canada, they've got a Bill of Human Rights. So there was a court case. And it went to their Supreme Court. Supreme Court instructed the government, you have to write this law. And then they wrote a law which

was narrower than what the Supreme Court said. And the Supreme Court said, no, no, that's not what we said. You've got to write the law. We told you you've got to write. So that's a very different system. So outside of religious reasons, has anyone in the world come up with a solid case or situation to argue why we shouldn't have euthanage laws? No, not one that holds water. Absolutely not. because for all the reasons we've just been discussing the reality is we live longer than we ever did we used to die of communicable diseases now we die of chronic ones

medical science is amazing but one of the downsides of medical science is it keeps us alive longer than we ever lived which means that many of us are going to die pretty unhappy, sometimes brutal deaths so there is no good answer to that reality what does drive people who want to stop it Is it that they, is it because it's a taboo and they're in denial about death?

It's a couple of things. I think we're all in denial about death a little bit. Take out of bed in the morning. It's a huge taboo to... It is. You know, if you take Paul Keating, for example, who I've never heard a Labour prime minister quoted by more conservative politicians than Paul Keating has on this issue, you can set your watch bar.

We actually have Keating bingo in parliamentary debates now because you can be able. set you watch by, as Paul Keating said in 2017, but his point is, this is a Rubicon. Once you cross this, you know, this intentional killing of people line, society has changed forever, which is, of course, a nonsense, because we already have laws which enable people to choose to end their lives. You can, if you're really ill, you can legally withdraw from all treatment and stop eating and drinking, and the hospital will support you in that, and that can take two weeks, sometimes longer to die. And it's psychologically painful. It's just, it's horrible. But our law says you can do that. Our law says that if you're on dialysis, you can stop dialysis.

You can stop chemotherapy, which is going to, which may well be a life-ending decision. In certain circumstances, your family can have you taken off light support machines. So we have laws, which already have crossed that Rubicon. It's just, they cross them slowly. And they cross them slowly because of our Judeo-Christian background, which says that we must never hasten death, that this is God's affair, not ours. And there are, not all people who oppose it, view it from a religious framework.

Some just say they worry about the slippery slope in that once you allow a law for one category of people who are suffering, well, how do you ever stop that? To which I say it varies from nation to nation. in Europe, for example, their laws allow the basis of their laws is how much you're suffering, not how long you've got till you die. But to argue that because a law exists somewhere else means that's what's going to happen here is a pretty foolish argument.

You know, Australia and America both have guns, but we're not going to end up with America's gun laws. We have an entirely different culture and set of parliaments. The argument that I found certainly persuasive at one point was to do with the NATO. of the medical system. So the notion is the Hippocratic Oath says you've always got to do good, you've always got to treat people.

And so is it then changing the nature, and I heard this from a doctor, is this then changing the nature of being a doctor if death is on the table, if it's part of the doctor's toolkit, is to approve death. And that to me is it's a non-religious argument. It's about the nature of medical ethics.

But, of course, there are doctors who do support this, and very many of them. how do you think, or how have we seen in Victoria the medical profession deal with this new responsibility or a new codification of probably what's always been a responsibility? Yeah look for some doctors that's a very real objection and it's one they can and should be allowed to legitimately hold so the law is voluntary no one is compelled to participate but you know if you

want to take the Hippocratic Oath most medical students don't swear to it anymore there's a thing called the Convention of Geneva the Hippocratic Oath if you want to go go by phrase by phrase, well, then you never cut open a patient. Women can't practice medicine, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, moving on from the fact it's ancient. For many doctors, so the bit of the Hippocratic Oath, the doctors who object always quote is, do no harm. We must do no harm.

And that's based on the oath says you must never give a poison to somebody. But for many doctors, the idea of leaving someone who is dying, who can't be helped any other way, to suffer, that is the definition of harm. So what have we seen happen in Victoria? A small but increasing number of doctors have qualified to assess for VAD because you've got to get special training. And for those doctors, and I've interviewed quite a number of them,

it's quite a profound experience. And they see that as their deepest level of care. And probably the best example I can give is an oncologist who was profoundly Roman Catholic. In fact, he laughed. He said, my wife is Mary and my son is Joseph. Does he know Dominic Peritay? They all know each other, Dom.

and he was a conscientious objective because of his Catholic faith. But being an oncologist, he said my job, oncologist deal with cancer, is to see patients all the way through their journey. And he started getting people coming to him saying, can you help me with this? And he would refer them onto someone else. And he took time away from his practice to do an ethics course because he was challenged.

And eventually he said to his wife, who still doesn't agree with him, he said, I'm not doing the right thing here. If I'm really going to see my patients through to the end, anyone that's got the courage to come and do this because God knows it takes courage to come and ask a doctor to help you to do this I should have the courage to help them and he told me that the first time he

assisted someone through assisted dying it was a fairly young person and he said I learned so much from that person it was such a powerful thing for me and I really felt like I'd fulfilled my duty as an oncologist as I saw it Thank you for your patience your call is important

Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. I like that you call your organization go gentle because we go. So how do you go? And gentle is a nice way to put it.

The image is actually a very, it's not a shocking one. It's actually a reassuring image. it's I guess what most of us want I mean there are people and I have incredible respect for this and I've heard of people it say however bad it is bring it all on

there are people who it is important that they're suffering as part of their view of it joins them with the suffering of Christ and I certainly don't disparage that view at all but I think gentle is how we would want it to be you know I had one parent my dad who died not gently and it was really shocking

But my other parent, my mum, died very gently. So I've seen both. And I think most of us, I would imagine, would want to die as we have lived as the person we are, not some torn apart shell, not some grotesque remainder of that human being. And not just for ourselves, but also that's what we want our family to take away. And, you know, it's really struck me the number of people I've worked alongside over the last six years, a bit like myself they're there not because they had any interest in being involved in politics

but because of what they saw happen to someone they love and they are so scarred by that and I've met people literally have PTSD because of what they saw that they have changed their lives they've literally changed their lives to ensure that that doesn't happen to other families and I think you know the Catholic Church remains the most powerful single force against this and it's a 2,000-year-old institution, the most successful one in the history of our civilization. And they're thought of

as they are, this very, very powerful institution. But I think part of the reason they're not winning this fight that they have won for so long is that they don't understand. They've never understood the strength of what's up against them. It is far stronger, the anger of what people have been forced to go through far stronger than any 2,000-year-old religious creed. It's interesting too because I grew up in the Christian faith. And if you look at the biblical Jesus, this is a man with compassion who understood suffering and who did all that he could to ease it. And I would love to know how these things get reconciled.

But it's a strong moral opposition. In New South Wales, as you say, you've got Premier and Opposition Leader implacably opposed to this. How does the debate go from here, do you think? What's the strategy? Just quickly, going back to that idea of Jesus, the former Archbishop Baccomitory, Lord George Carey, who's gone against his church strongly in support,

he said it beautifully, he said, there's nothing holy about agony, which I think is a really good way of looking at it. You'd imagine Jesus would be fairly anti-agony post the experience? I would think Jesus would have a fair bit of, as he did in the temple, turning over the tables. I think he'd be slapping a lot of doctors around the ears right now and a lot of the hierarchy at the church,

but I shouldn't be speaking for Jesus, should I? That's Anthony Fisher's job. So how does it go from here? Well, in New South Wales, there's what's called the second reading debate, which may conclude this week, and that's where all the MPs that want to speak, speak, I support it, I don't support it. And then it goes into assuming it passes that level,

which I think it will, it goes into what's called third reading, where they go through the bill in detail. And that's where people at oppose it will try and either get it voted down or put in amendments. I've learned a lot about the parliamentary process. They'll put in amendments designed to improve the bill, but actually designed to make it impossible for people to actually ever use. So it becomes this very fierce wrangle over words and clauses and phrases.

And, you know, I can't remember how many clauses are in this bill. There'd be well over 100. Every one of them is debated. So it's quite an exhausting process. So it becomes like you can't use voluntary-assisted euthanasia if you've got water in your body, if you need vitamin D to survive, if you've got a half. It could be that. And, you know, a parliament can write a law anyway at once.

They could write a law which says voluntary assisted dying is only available to people called Charles, who are between the ages of 40 and 42 and who live in Lumia. And wasn't born on a day ending and why. That's right, which is kind of the little subclause, yes. Like the Texas gun laws. But actually those amendments, they're actually designed for the headlines, aren't they? They're actually, because it's quite a sort of well-honed craft, those amendments. They're things where it's like, but what if it's a child who has a promising career?

No. No, the amendments are. Aren't they emotive, like that? No, no, no, amendments, that's actually the nuts and bolts of any piece of legislation. That's where it becomes. So I'll give you an example from Victoria. That Victorian legislation, which was so fiercely fought, it says, No other state says this.

The law says that no doctor can raise the issue of voluntary assisted dying with a patient. And that was meant to be a safeguard. Every other state's gone, you're kidding, aren't you? Because doctors in Victoria say there is literally no other area, no other legal medical thing that is available that we're not allowed to discuss with our patients. Can they slide the pamphlet across the desk or not even that much? No, you literally cannot do that. and there is no pamphlet.

So, you know, it's a hard law to, it's a hard law we're even to find out about. So that's an example of... So only non-doctors are allowed to bring it up. So the chase could produce a helpful pamphlet. Yeah, but doctors I've spoken to, it's tricky because they're trying to work out where in a conversation it's clear that somebody, this is what somebody is wanting to talk about. It's an impractical.

Yeah, so unless you say it directly, you know, doctor, I really want to talk about this assisted dying thing, which will happen more as it becomes a more accepted part of practice. Unless you say directly, doctors are in this kind of awkward dance of, do I... And maybe there are backyard pamphleteers who just sort of, you know... That's right. There's a town cry. Here ye!

Do you want to die? I mean, Pauline Hanson's been producing cartoons. We can make cartoons. I saw that. I saw that. I saw that. Is it possible for a caricature to become a cartoon? It's very interesting philosophical question.

So do you think it'll get up in New South Wales? I think it will pass the lower house. My anxiety is what amendments will also pass. In the upper house, Dom, it's really tight. It could be just one or two votes either way. And that's pretty remarkable when you think about it because by the time it gets to that point, assuming it passes the lower house,

it will be legal in five states in Australia. It will have passed the lower house the first time in the history of New South Wales. And there's going to be an entire state, if not nation, looking at just one or two members of the upper house, going, what are you going to do? The most illegitimate sort of house in the most illegitimate state of Australia. So if we can't get this up, do we have to wait another four years for a new government?

Where do we go from here? It could be eight years, could be 12 years, because the opposition leader doesn't support it. It's actually, it's a difficult, as a private member, remember, it's difficult to get this through the system. It could be a long time. It could be a generation before this state has this opportunity again. And in that time, we know what's going to happen.

We know that a certain number of terminallyal people are going to take their own lives every year, leaving families and first responders with that trauma. We know a certain number of people, despite everything that palliative care and medicine can do, are going to die horrendously. We know people are going to still take that legal choice to starve and dehydrate themselves to death. all those other ways of ending people's lives which are legal are going to continue. It's not going to address any of the problems the law is designed to address. So it would be a very retrograde step for New South Wales.

And so is there anything we can do to sort of lobby the people in the upper house? Like are there, should we be calling a local member or a local house? I assume you mean individuals listening rather than the chaser. We're not known for our diplomatic skills in the session. No, no, we should probably just stick out of it, didn't me? No, no, no, but like, are there crucial swing votes of people who are sort of on the fence? Absolutely, and I think you should, people underestimate the value of contacting a local member, even if their upper house. I can assure you that those that oppose this law, and, you know, again, it's largely a religious view.

There's a very organised campaign, you know, through churches and others to make sure that they contact local members. I know from having spoken to so many MPs around Australia over the last five years, if they get a flood of stuff, particularly if it's handwritten, not, or, you know, an individual contact in their office, not just something that's a copy, they pay attention. It makes them worry, well, is this how people feel in my electorate? Obviously, in the upper house, it's slightly different, but no politician is impervious to public opinion, and I think it's, I think one of the things we've done very effectively over the last five or six years, it's put a really white-hot spotlight on this.

So all MPs know that they are being well and truly watched in their decision. And, you know, there's a bunch of lower house MPs that stood up in Parliament last week and said they weren't going to vote for this. Vote compass did very significant polling on this about 18 months ago, every electorate in New South Wales. And they were standing up and speaking against what 80% of their electorates wanted. And the arguments they were giving were not good arguments. They weren't, as I was saying, before, evidence-based.

And I think they, I know from Victoria and I know from Western Australia that MPs that strongly oppose these laws, they were punished for it at the ballot box and some were punished for it by losing their seats. Well, social change comes slowly in Australia. We're not very good at keeping up with things. But this has been remarkable. This has been since 2016 to get it in almost every jurisdiction

in a relatively respectful and not ridiculous way has been a huge achievement. Andrew, it's bizarre to see comedians getting in and making the world a better place, but thank you. Well, first of all, very few people who will call me a comedian anymore, Tom. I think I handed in my badge around the time of randling, which was an early assisted death. It was just me practising. That's when you realised it was so necessary. Yeah, that's right.

I'm dying here. I need help. it was um yeah but look it's it's also because it's an idea whose time has come you know this year one of the most catholic countries in in the world spain passed this law it's happening this conversation is happening all around the world at different levels the the arrow of history is only flying in one direction on this and and for the for the catholic church who who still do a lot of good in our society they've basically had two millennia of only one response to this whole vexed issue of how we die, which is, no, no, you can't do that. Well, society's moved on from

them. And it's one of the reasons, I think, certainly in this country, their congregations are dropping away because even their own congregants go, well, you don't represent the real world now. It's crazy to think that the country that had the Spanish Inquisition is more progressive than New South Wales. That's exactly right. Well, nobody expects New South Wales. Thank you very much, Andrew. Go gently. Australia.org.org.com, if you want to find out more about the campaign, thanks for joining us. Thank you. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important.

Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Thanks for joining us today and thanks to Andrew for making time to chat with us. Our gear is remote microphones. We're part of the ACAST Creator Network, and we're back tomorrow with a somewhat less serious morning episode. Catch you then.